The Indonesian government plans to tax cryptocurrency transactions, which have reached a significant volume in the country. This may yield trillions of rupiah for state coffers by 2024.
Teguh Kurniawan Harmanda, COO of local crypto trading platform Tokocrypto, told CNBC Indonesia that industry players and government officials, including the Trade Ministry’s Futures Exchange Supervisory Board (Bappebti), are currently discussing how to impose the tax.
Harmanda said that industry representatives proposed to subject crypto traders to an income tax of 0.05%, a smaller amount than the 0.1% that investors on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) are paying. “We don’t know yet how much is the [tax] goal. But we see that the potential government revenue from crypto-asset transactions in 2024 will reach the trillions,” he added.
Cryptocurrencies caught the attention of the Indonesian government due to their rapid growth in daily transaction volume, which reached IDR 70 trillion (USD 4.8 billion) in February. Daily volumes on the IDX only accounted for IDR 20 trillion (USD 1.38 billion) in January, and have fallen since early April to around IDR 9 trillion (USD 621 million).
The government is also preparing regulations to ensure a safe environment for traders. A dedicated crypto marketplace, called the Digital Future Exchange (DFX), is set to start operating in the second half of 2021. Currently, 229 legal crypto assets can be traded on 13 Bappebti-registered platforms.
This article first appeared in Daily Social.